3 Million Years
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Now he is out of stasis, Dave Lister has time to think. But has the fact he could be the last human in the universe really sank in yet?


I don't own Red Dwarf.

Please let me know what you think.

In the novels, it was stated Lister deliberately got himself into trouble so then he would get put into stasis. I've written that into the one-shot.

* * *

3 Million Years.

Dave Lister woke up in the middle of the night, looking around the darkened room he shared with Rimmer before he rested his head back down on his pillow and tried to get himself back to sleep. He quickly realised he couldn't, and so he was left lying there in the middle of the night looking around at the narrow viewing port showing the blackness of space with distant stars twinkling.

Dave remembered when he had first come to work for the JMC, he had loved looking out of the port though in a few months of being in this room with Rimmer he had soon found the sight boring. Even now, 3 million years away from smegging Earth, the view was boring except these stars were different in a more subtle way.

They were…frightening in a way. There was nothing to see; the view of deep space was as empty as a pot of noodle. At least in Earth's solar system, there were ships, probes, satellites, balls of compacted garbage, and planets to give it a bit of life.

Out here, out here there was nothing.

Dave closed his eyes and sighed loudly before he caught himself in case Rimmer had heard him. The holographic incarnation of his dead bunkmate was as frustrating as the original, and the last thing Lister wanted right now was some kind of annoying lecture from Rimmer about not getting enough beauty sleep; why, of all the holographic discs he had of the entire crew, did Holly have to use Rimmer's disc to create a hologram of a man who was so sad and pathetic he not just lied to people about his name and what he did, but spent his days dreaming about something he was never likely to gain in the long run and blamed everyone around him because he wasn't able to admit he was a useless failure.

Lister tried desperately to get to sleep, but he found he couldn't. With a sigh of irritation, he clambered slowly out of his bunk and he got to the floor without waking up Rimmer. He grabbed his dressing gown and some slippers, and he walked out of the room and he started walking around the ship.

Lister hugged himself for warmth as he walked through the corridors. It felt very eerie walking through Red Dwarf now; yeah, he could hear the throbbing, humming, whispering and lots of other words that ended in 'ing' of the machinery of the ship, but the real soul of the ship, the human crew, was long gone.

He walked to the Drive Room so he could get some peace away from Rimmer - the hologram wouldn't have anything he would particularly want to hear, and besides he needed a bit of peace and quiet so he could mentally sort through everything that had happened. He walked into the Captain's office and plonked himself down without a care in the world; Hollister was dead and only Rimmer would have a go at him for sitting here if that stupid way he'd claimed he was on report earlier was anything to go by. Lister had never cared before about those stupid reports and neither had the officers who had never given Rimmer the time of day although the sad bastard had never really realised it before, what would make the hologram think he did now?

The crew were _dead. _

Hollister was _dead, _and he was not going to come back.

What did it even **_matter _**now?

Rimmer could go on and on about those stupid regulations and stuff dreamt up by some gimp back home, back in the days where they mattered, but Lister didn't care.

As he thought about the loss of the crew and the captain, even though he had only seen the man from afar once or twice, Lister closed his eyes and sighed, pushing the thoughts of Rimmer out of his mind as it hit him full on; he had felt it slowly take over his numb mind as he came to grips with what Holly had been saying earlier when he had tried to tell him the rest of the crew were gone, and it had hit him full on when he had licked the dust remains of Petersen and smeg knew who else.

Urghh!

He'd eaten half of the crews _remains _and Holly hadn't warned him.

Something was really _not right _about that guy.

He was the only member of the crew left. Rimmer didn't count, he was a hologram even though deed down Lister felt holograms should have rights as humans did.

He was just an _echo _of the original Rimmer, and he was just as frustrating as the original though now Rimmer was yakking about being dead without trying to move on. The Cat didn't really count either, although it was great to have the last thing he had left of Frankenstein alive and nearby even if the creature who flounced around the ship in sharp suits and cared only about himself was nothing like the quiet, sweet black cat he'd loved although he wondered if Holly hadn't gotten it all wrong about Frankenstein's kittens getting together and evolving over the centuries in the cargo decks - what a wonderful place for a brand new race to live, he thought to himself - because he had heard rumours of people on the ship who had secretly smuggled cats onboard the ship in defiance of the Space Corps stupid rules about pets that weren't quarantined.

Lister had never really cared for those rules himself. What happened on the Oregon with those rabbits had been a fluke. Okay, so they had taken on a load of rabbits - Lister had forgotten how many - and they had been allowed to go over the ship, having little baby rabbits, and it had gotten out of hand and the ship ended up flying backwards, as Hollister had so kindly reminded him when he'd confronted Dave with that photo of him holding Frankenstein, but the point was this was different.

Cats weren't anything like rabbits.

They didn't go around eating every piece of brightly coloured wire thinking it was a piece of carrot or some other piece of veg. No, they were calmer. They wouldn't damage the ship that much, especially since they were in a different part of the ship, and it would take years before they became a danger if they wanted, but by then they should have been found and removed.

But Hollister hadn't cared about that. Lister closed his eyes as he pictured Hollister's pudgy face. He missed him, just like he missed the rest of the crew. Okay, so many of them were stuck up smegheads - why Rimmer failed his exams, Lister didn't have a clue since the idiot would have fitted right in - but they were still human beings and now he was the last one in the universe Lister felt even more lonely.

Lister felt even more depressed as the thought came back to him.

The last human.

What a joke.

He couldn't believe it. He felt as though it was only a few hours since he had entered the stasis booth as punishment for Frankenstein (he wished Todhunter was still alive, the guy may have been an officer, but he was still a good mate) and then came back out again in what seemed like a few seconds, only to discover the entire crew were dead, killed by a radiation leak from a faulty drive plate that was badly repaired before it blew and exposed the entire crew to a blast of radiation, and Red Dwarf was 3 million years away from Earth.

Okay, when he had come up with thep lan to get himself put into stasis so then he could return to Earth quicker, Lister had never even imagined everything going so badly wrong as they had. That was why he had sent those pictures to be processed, and in the meantime Frankenstein would be kept safe. But he had become just so tired of life on the ship that he had felt it would be worth it.

At the same time... he had thought about Kris and the life he had wanted for the pair of them. Now those hopes were shot to hell.

Now he was alone with his thoughts, Lister had time to think.

How the _smeg _could Rimmer have screwed up so badly with the drive plate like that and why the hell did the stupid hologram point the finger at Lister for not being there?

Lister didn't pretend to know the first thing about the drive plates, so what was the point in the blame game? But that was Rimmer for you. Lister had never once heard the fool say something was his own fault; he had blamed the examiners for making him nervous just as he was about to sit an exam before he claimed to be a fish and then faint.

And that was the guy who was selected to repair something as critical as the drive plate? Rimmer knew nothing about astronavigation never mind Astro engineering. What made the gimp who selected Rimmer for the job think he was the one for it in the first place?

Lister ran a hand down his face before he got out of the chair and left the drive room; he didn't know what half of the equipment in there did, though he hoped by now Holly was plotting a course for Fiji. Back home…

He paused on the threshold of the room and he felt tears sting his eyes.

_Home…_

Tears slowly trickled down his face as he thought about Earth.

_Am I all that's left of the human race, the last guy alive? _The thought was depressing, but he had to find out. That was why he'd told Holly to plot a course for Fiji, for Earth.

He needed to find out for himself if he was last of humanity. Rimmer, in his 'voice of reason' impression, had told him the human race was gone, why should it matter? Lister had told him to smeg off, but he had to admit the hologram had a point; how were they supposed to know what had happened to their old planet? For all they knew it had been blown up, melted, smothered by clouds, or smeg knew what else.

_But surely the human race survived somehow, right? _Lister thought to himself desperately. _I don't care if apes have taken over to rule the Earth, or the cockroaches or the whales have revolted because they'd gotten tired of being sushi. I just want to find out. _

But…. three million years was a long time, and while Holly had hinted he was the last human since, unlike the dinosaurs who had been content just milling about the planet without screwing it up with all kinds of garbage thrown into the seas and in the air, humanity had caused Earth a lot of damage.

_But humanity was getting out of Earth, wasn't it?_

Lister knew there were experiments in building faster than light drive ships. Yeah, they weren't on the drawing boards at the time, but surely in 3 million years, they would have gotten out unless they'd dropped it for a bit and ended up doing the work now. Had humans gone to the stars like they were _Captain Kirk? _Had there been a human interstellar empire with a Darth Vader-like character?

Lister did not know.

But it would be a laugh finding out.


End file.
